The shameless whitewashing of right-wing Remoaners

So farewell, then, Amber Rudd. At the weekend, Rudd became the second minister to resign from Boris Johnson’s cabinet. Since she announced the end of her short tenure as work and pensions secretary in The Sunday Times, the tributes from Remainers have been flooding in – many of them reading from the same script, it seems.

Rudd’s resignation was ‘brave and principled’, according to the recently sacked Remainer ‘rebel’ David Gauke. She is ‘principled and capable’, said pro-Remain Jeremy Hunt. She is ‘principled, brave, honest and loyal’, according to Roland Rudd, leader of the People’s Vote second-referendum campaign – who is also her brother. One Labour MP tweeted that Rudd is ‘faithful to good honest principles’; another Labour MP praised her for ‘putting principles before her career’.

Of course, it wasn’t all that long ago that Amber Rudd was sacked for her handling of the Windrush scandal. Rudd’s Home Office inherited the ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy from Theresa May, a cruel and brutal policy that caused great misery for many innocent people with its mantra of ‘Deport first, ask questions later’. In 2018, it came to light that the Home Office had been deporting black British citizens who had lived in the UK legally for decades – some for over 50 years. Some were sent threatening letters and others had their homes raided by immigration officers. Some were denied vital services, including life-or-death medical treatment.

And yet all the vomit-inducing gushing over the ‘principled and brave’ Rudd is coming from the side of the debate that claims to care oh so deeply about the plight of migrants. Now that Rudd has come out as a potential Brexit-wrecker, all is forgiven, it seems. She ‘humanised the [Conservative] party’s tough, technocratic face’, wrote one liberal Tory in the Guardian, lamenting her loss, with no apparent sense of irony or shame.

Rudd is far from the only right-wing politician whose reputation has been ‘Remainwashed’. All of the former Tories who voted to block a No Deal Brexit – an obvious ploy to stop Brexit itself and overturn the referendum result – are talked of as ‘moderates’, whereas the MPs who favour democracy and upholding the referendum result are labelled as ‘right wing’, ‘far right’ and ‘extreme’.

Since his sacking last week, Philip Hammond has lamented the takeover of his party by an ‘extreme right-wing faction’. This is the same Philip Hammond who, in 1994, stood for election in Newham calling to bring back hanging – quite an extreme, right-wing position by most accounts. It’s a position he claims to have renounced, but even as recently as 2015, under Hammond’s tenure as foreign secretary, the UK began watering down its opposition to the death penalty abroad. Nevertheless, because Hammond opposes a No Deal Brexit, he is viewed as a centrist moderate.

Speaking of hanging, the rabidly pro-Remain speaker John Bercow, in his student days, was chair of the pro-Apartheid Federation of Conservative Students. Most infamously, the group produced posters calling to ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’. As a Tory councillor, he produced The John Bercow Guide to Understanding Women, which gave advice on how ‘how to pick up virgins’. ‘Women’, he wrote, ‘will settle for anything that breathes and has a credit card’. Charming! Bercow’s wife, Sally Bercow, insists the speaker’s attitudes have mellowed since his days as a ‘right-wing headbanger’, but it is still striking that Bercow has been transformed into a hero of the liberal elite, merely because he has done so much to scupper Brexit in the Commons.

Nicholas Soames – who the media never tire of reminding us is Winston Churchill’s grandson – has undergone a similar transformation. Before Brexit, Soames was widely seen as a sexist dinosaur. According to a Telegraph report from 2005, he was seen as ‘the most prolific source of vulgar and sexist comments in the House of Commons’. More recently, in 2017, Soames was chastised for making ‘woof, woof’ noises at the SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. But in 2019, he is considered a heroic Remainer, an irreplaceable loss to the Conservative Party. Strangely, the causes the liberal elite claims to care about, particularly sexism and racism, fade into irrelevance when it comes to stopping Brexit.

Remainwashing is not confined to the Tories, either. Tony Blair has spent much of his post-prime ministerial career advising autocrats for vast amounts of cash, including Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev. Now he is trotted out on the Today programme every few weeks to advise the plebs to remain in the EU. His chief spindoctor Alistair Campbell is also a leading light in the continuity Remain campaign. This is the same Campbell and Blair who cooked up the most shameless and destructive lie of the 21st century – that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Their actions led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, but… they support remaining in the EU, so they can’t be all that bad.

In their shameless battle to overthrow the largest democratic mandate in our nation’s history, Remainers are rehabilitating some of the most destructive figures in British politics and whitewashing some of the most bizarre right-wing views.

jessica christon

14th September 2019 at 3:42 pm

Because they’re not “immigrant loving”, this is nothing more than a pose they strike, along with the rest of the checklist of ‘correct’ views they hold which are of no consequence to them whatsoever. Nothing’s a crisis until it hits the middle classes, and immigration hasn’t done that yet.

Jane Carter

11th September 2019 at 8:48 am

Not only whitewashing, but inherited exaltation in the case of Winston Churchill’s grandson.

I hadn’t realised until now that the left placed such importance on pedigree rather than on merit.

Ven Oods

10th September 2019 at 6:24 pm

The tributes to Rudd, and the fawning over the departing Speaker, smack of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ – for now, at any rate.

Mike Ellwood

10th September 2019 at 5:08 pm

ZENOBIA PALMYRA is clearly the Norman Tebbit de nos jours, though this time in a Remainer guise.

AMELIA CANTOR wants Spiked to use “Kulak” instead of “middle class” (does she pronounce it with a long or short “a”, I wonder?). It does not really fit the case nicely. “bourgeoisie” is more elegant, and, I feel, appropriate. Or perhaps Biedermann (plural: Biedermänner), if you are of a more Teutonic frame of mind. “Bürgerschaft” would also be possible, although it can have a wider meaning, e.g. just “citizenry”, and so may not capture the required pejorative flavour. I like the idea of using a German word though, since the EU is an essentially German creation, and Ms Cantor wants us to remain under the control of the EU in perpetuity.

Amelia Cantor

Why do Spiked constantly use “middle class” as a sneer and incitement to class-hatred? It’s three syllables long and has twelve letters, ffs. I suggest Spiked use “Kulak” instead. It’s much snappier.

Plus, it will remind comrades of the glorious days of the Bolshevik Revolution and of what happened then to enemies of progress.

Neil McCaughan

10th September 2019 at 4:52 pm

It’s short for “metropolitan lower middle class” – the sort of unctuous preening turnips who rolled up in their dozens to little Owen Jones’s anti-democracy protests the other weekend. The special kind of stupid who think their concerns over the camembert actually matter.

Michael Lynch

10th September 2019 at 12:27 am

Watching the Parliamentary debates tonight. How utterly depressing, frustrating and, most of all, embarrassing. The so called rebel alliance are full of themselves with self righteous indignation. Mewing and bowing to a Speaker who has been downright partisan and anti Brexit for the last three years. Labour members actually grieving over the 21 Tory members who have lost the whip. These were sworn enemies only a few weeks ago; the enemy of my enemy is now my friend! The hypocrisy and irony ceaselessly dribbles out of their mouths as they accuse the PM of being anti democratic. The very person offering the people a chance to speak again at the ballot box. They’ll vote down the election, however, and capitulate once again. I’m afraid that this is set to go on and on and on without resolution. How the rest of the world must be laughing at them; the so called Mother of all Parliaments, guardians of democracy, denying the very thing they are supposed to defend.

A Game

10th September 2019 at 5:34 am

Yes, it was a surreal experience. The Remainers… its strange. They want to say something rousing and there isn’t a single sincere thing they have to say. They fall back on their propaganda, over and over, ad nauseum. You can see it even grinds their own side down.

Its like they don’t believe in a single thing other than… bashing the government.
There’s always room for that, but aside from pretending they love the people’s voice, they don’t have a single thing to say. Just this childish virtue signalling. There’s something insane about it.

Michael Lynch

10th September 2019 at 8:33 am

Insanity is exactly the right word to describe the events. The way the Labour Party, Lib Dems and the SNP refused to respect protocol at the end was sickening to watch.

Stuart Mack

9th September 2019 at 7:46 pm

Lets also not forget Rudd’s refusal to hold an inquiry into the events that took place at Orgreave coking plant during the 1984-85 Miners’ strike, or to provide files held by the Home Office.

Christopher Tyson

9th September 2019 at 7:18 pm

London’s Evening Standard is very much a stalwart Remainer publication. Credit where it’s due, though since George Osborne took over as editor, we don’t see so much London nationalism, articles about how London is subsidising the rest of the country, should collect its own taxes and cut itself adrift from all those losers in the provinces. My own view is that London is the capital of the UK, attracts people and resources from around the UK and has a responsibility to the rest of the UK. What’s London mayor Sadiq Khan’s view? Sadiq grew up a couple of miles from where I grew up in South London, but he’s moved on to grander things, maybe he hangs out in North London these days, I don’t know. In today’s Standard Sadiq accuses Boris Johnson of being prepared to ‘recklessly undermine our precious democracy’, nice to see a bit of patriotism from Sadiq there. But when Sadiq suggests that Boris’s behaviour is what you would expect in a ‘banana republic’ I think his patriotism maybe going a little too far for some tastes, I mean Sadiq’s new found friend in North London might find it touch offensive to people who come from banana growing countries; usually Africa, South America, the Caribbean, generally not in Europe, of course I’m not suggesting that Sadiq is racist or chauvinistic in anyway, that’s not how we roll in easy going South London. Sadiq closes his article by saying ‘As Major, I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure Britain stays in the EU. Our membership is in London’s best interests-and it’s what the majority of Londoners want. So as Major of London Sadiq is committed to overriding not just the wishes of the 40% of Londoners who voted to leave the EU but also the wishes of the leave voters all over the country, and we wonder why folks in the provinces think that Londoners are a self-interested and arrogant..

Jim Lawrie

9th September 2019 at 8:33 pm

When it comes to strutting on the international stage, he gives Nicola Sturgeon a run for her money. A comparison of their foreign travel claims would be needed to decide it.
Also like her, he would take his fiefdom into the Euro tomorrow if he could. Although he might find some difficulty in bringing South London up to the mark.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

9th September 2019 at 9:23 pm

How does ‘overriding’ the wishes of the 40 per cent of Londoners who voted leave make Khan a hypocrite? The overwhelming majority of Londoners voted remain. Given that Khan’s duty is to act in the interest of the majority of his constituents, I suggest that he is doing the right and democratic thing by speaking out against Brexit.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

9th September 2019 at 7:17 pm

Disappointing to see one article after another on this website calumniating ‘Remoaners’ (whoever they might be). Approximately one half of the UK electorate voted to remain in the 2016 referendum. Does the author of this piece believe that these people can all be described as ‘liberal elite’? And does the author of this piece believe that 16+ million people can be lumped together as essentially having the same views and having voted remain for precisely the same reason? The motivations for voting remain were as varied as the reasons leavers voted for their side. I voted remain and believe that Rudd is a hypocrite – she should never have joined that government so opportunistically in the first place. Also, what has Blair got to do with the views of most remainers? I personally despise Blair for his hypocrisy over Iraq and obsession with money. Again, this article does nothing to further debate and is based fundamentally on a straw man.

David Webb

9th September 2019 at 7:11 pm

You have to laugh at Spiked’s comment policy. Brendan O’Neill et al claim to be against PC and for free speech – but this is simply untrue. Their comment policy says you can’#t post a comment if it “promotes discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age or links to articles or websites that do the same”. There you have it. Intersectionality 101.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

9th September 2019 at 9:17 pm

Good point. Maybe Brendan is a little confused, like the rest of humanity?

David Webb

9th September 2019 at 10:40 pm

Well, I’ve been censored here. My other comment was deleted. If you believe Brendan O’Neill et al believe in free speech, you’re easily conned. I do not accept that non-white people can be British, it’s that simple.

Dominic Straiton

9th September 2019 at 6:54 pm

Standing by your election manifesto is an extremist position it seems. Who new.

Jim Lawrie

9th September 2019 at 9:20 pm

Certainly extremely rare.

Jerry Owen

9th September 2019 at 5:17 pm

Never let it be said that ‘remainers’ don’t have principles .. it’s just that they are , well.. all over the place !

Jim Lawrie

9th September 2019 at 5:31 pm

Credit where it is due Jerry. They go out with their anti-working class principles held high, and in the company of kindred spirits.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

9th September 2019 at 7:23 pm

Childish nonsense. I went to a comprehensive school in the urban north-east of England and voted remain. Many working class areas remain poor because they refuse to fight back and maintain an attitude of docility. At some point, even though it is not easy, one must take some personal responsibility. The working classes of places like County Durham and Essex, for example, must take some responsibility for their own relative poverty. They believe in nothing and take no action, merely moaning about Westminster, London, the ‘liberal elite’, the EU, foreigners or whatever. This isn’t the Dunkirk spirit, it’s just moral and intellectual cowardice. Throughout the 19th century, the working classes organised and resisted. The working classes of today are only interested in sport and beer – nothing wrong with that per se, but if that is all you think about then you deserve to be shafted. Get on your bikes, people of Essex!

Jim Lawrie

9th September 2019 at 8:01 pm

Zenobia in debate it is the convention to reply to what someone has posted . My post was about retiring Tories. Yours was about yourself. The only feature of your post that has any relation to mine is the contempt for working people that you share with thoses Tories.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

9th September 2019 at 9:21 pm

Nowhere did I say that I have contempt for working class people. I was merely pointing out that they are complicit in many of their problems, especially through their lack of interest in politics and failure to organise political resistance at a local level. People who voted leave as a protest against the London government are fools, regardless of their social status. The problems of this country are fundamentally about its own domestic inadequacies (lack of a written constitution, destruction of local government by Thatcherite ideologues, dominance of fee-paying schools, etc.) and not the EU.

Michael Lynch

10th September 2019 at 1:24 am

Zenobia, my ancient Syrian Queen, your whole post is snob ridden nonsense. It mirrors the sentiments of that other insufferable ass, Heseltine, when he spoke about how the working classes should take responsibility by getting on their bikes during the Thatcher years. Your words are full of contempt for ordinary folk. The fact that you included the reference gives away your intentions on here and that is to merely provoke. You are nought but a troll, albeit sophisticated and erudite.